Professor Dr. Liora Halperin

Biography

Liora Halperin is a Professor at the University of Washington, holding a joint appointment in the Department of History and the Jackson School of International Studies. She was awarded her Ph.D. in History from UCLA in 2011, and her research interests include 19th and 20th Century Culture, Gender, Jewish Studies, Language, Middle East Studies, Modern Europe, Nationalism, and Social History. Halperin's work specifically explores nationalism and collective memory, focusing on Jewish cultural social history, language ideology, and the politics of colonization and settlement. She is currently writing a book about diverse urban Jewish communities in late 19th and early 20th century Ottoman Palestine, examining the interactions of various political movements, including both Zionist and anti-Zionist perspectives. Halperin has authored significant works such as 'Oldest Guard: Forging Zionist Settler Past' published by Stanford in 2021, and 'Babel Zion: Jews, Nationalism, Language Diversity Palestine, 1920-1948', published by Yale in 2015, which received the Shapiro Prize from the Association for Israel Studies. Her published articles have appeared in reputable journals, contributing to the discourse in Jewish Studies and Middle Eastern studies.

Research Interests